COUNTRY DIARY:

Country life can be relaxing and good for the soul... but it can also have you huddled in the bathroom floor in the middle of the night in shock.

an unexpected visitor meets a sticky end

Living in the country is mostly a serene, pleasurable experience. But sometimes it can take you to the deepest, darkest state at three in the morning.

It can have you huddled on the floor of the bathroom, both hands over your ears, rocking while singing to yourself. And it can give you bad dreams for nights afterwards.

No, we don’t have a ghost. We just had yet another encounter with a possum. She was very cute, and she had decided to spend the day snuggled into our sun shelter on our deck. She had found a nice cosy spot where the shelter goes under the eaves of the house and had settled in for her day-sleep, since possums are nocturnal creatures.

I noticed her when I went out there to have my morning coffee. I heard a wriggling noise and saw the shape of some little feet in the canvas when I looked up. I got up and peered around and there she was staring at me – playing possum.

I ended up having my coffee on the other side of the house and made an executive decision to leave her be for the day, knowing that she would rouse herself come dusk.

“You know we have to kill it,” said my husband quite reasonably. “But we don’t own a gun.”

“That’s okay,” I said, ever the problem solver. “I’ll put one of my traps on the deck and that will do the trick.”

I watched the possum all day and was constantly challenged by my animal-loving nature, which found her to be very fluffy and cat-like. She even curled up to sleep like a cat. And her little ears were very cute and her fur so soft. Then I would have another coffee and talk myself back into the possums-are-evil mode, reminding myself of the damage they do to our native forests and birds. Then I would take another look and think that maybe I could tame her and she could be a pet and she could have her own Instagram account.

“No,” was all my husband said to that suggestion.

So I set the trap – it is a common Timms trap, which is a yellow plastic box into which the possum puts its head to get the apple bait and immediately has its neck broken. I’ve set them for years and had no trouble. But then I had never set one on the deck outside our bedroom door.

At 3am the dogs started barking and there was a loud banging outside, like the sound of a Timms trap being thrashed around. Paul got up to investigate and came back saying that the possum had been trapped and was just “wriggling a bit”.

“You have to go and finish it off,” I said. “This is cruel and inhumane.”

For an urban raised, café-loving man my husband always turns out to be up to it when faced with a catastrophe which, to me, this was.

“Where are you?” I heard him calling some minutes later in the pre-dawn stillness of our house.

He found me in the back bathroom singing to myself with my hands over my ears in full “Wendyl has had a shock” mode. “Oh dear, do you need a cup of tea?” I emerged 10 minutes later and peered out at the dead possum, which is when I realised it was a female and she was very fat – possibly pregnant. I couldn’t sleep, even after a cup of tea, because I realised that in the brief eight hours I had known this possum I had bonded with her. At what point do you stop being an animal lover, I wondered out loud?

“When it is a pest,” said my husband as he snored off, quite happy with a job well done, as men can do.

In the morning we buried her in the vege patch, as we’d done with the other possums I never knew but had happily killed, and a few dead chickens.

To preserve my country serenity, traps will now be set in the orchard, secured in the ground with pegs so they can do their job properly, and my deck will again be the peaceful place it was. Once my nights are no longer haunted by dreams of dying possums.

“I watched the possum all day and was constantly challenged by my animal-loving nature...”